9.23 reaction

[ash48]

I had a huge reaction post written out but decided it was far too negative and started to make me cry so I decided not to post it.

I will say that I didn't mind watching the episode (made all the better because I had zebra363 with me) but in all honesty it left me feeling pretty much nothing. Empty. Blank. Perhaps a bit annoyed, frustrated and sad.

I love these characters too much to see them wasted like this. To have them at odds all season just so we can have "near" apology scenes and confessions of "I lied". :(

For a whole season to mean absolutely nothing. To have gone absolutely no where. *sobs* (and not the good *sobs* - only S8 and S9 have reduced me to tears over loss of the show I fell in love with).

I need more time to process. I'm sure I will shake these blues away and find something salvageable here.

Though I'm thinking until Carver leaves I'll never see the Sam and Dean I grew to love.

I'd say they've already created their spin off. We watched it this season.

(PS: please, if you loved it and want to squee please feel free. I need to know it's worth hanging on to. I need to know that this is just all part of a plan to build this show back to something we recognise. I need to know that they didn't make Sam say important stuff only to have it completely and utterly ignored for a reason. I need to know that this hasn't just become the worst, predictable, most boring, fan servicing pile of... )

Comments

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

My problem is more that it ISN'T giving us something different from the Sam and Dean we fell in love with. It felt like it was trying to give us ~feels~ that have been stale for a few seasons now, and bringing home the lesson that there can be no change or progress, ever, only recursion.

Maybe later I will be able to consider that grimly effective. Maybe "I'm proud of us," was meant to be empty. Maybe the story of Sam trying to define family as something other than the Winchester sacrificial model and failing miserably and falling back into the mold is moving. Maybe Dean still being the guy who 'protectively' nullifies Sam's choices by knocking him out is meant to be horrifying -- just because he's not saying it's a dictatorship doesn't mean it still isn't Dean making a decision for Sam and imposing it by force. But it feels sort of like the show went around thinking it might try some new and different flavors for sustenance and then decided fuck it and just ordered a pizza. A pizza that was cold and congealing by the time it arrived.

However, I'm not made of stone. Jared's messy crying still does things to me, no matter how exasperated I am with the context. And I think demon!Dean could have potential. At very least, I think it will be something Jensen can do more interesting things with than his frankly pretty awful crazed by bloodlust performances. He's an actor who is better at subtle.

I really enjoyed Gadreel. Why couldn't we throw out all the other minor characters and keep him, instead of being stuck with Metatron? Crowley I'm a bit bored of, but at least he still has interactive chemistry and his plot potential is less grandiose and more interesting.

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word of this. Even though I do tend to like cold pizza better than hot, IRL...

[ash48.livejournal.com]

My problem is more that it ISN'T giving us something different from the Sam and Dean we fell in love with. It felt like it was trying to give us ~feels~ that have been stale for a few seasons now, and bringing home the lesson that there can be no change or progress, ever, only recursion.

Oh absolutely! This very much. The way the season started made me think they WERE going in a different direction and new ground would be covered. Instead, it felt like they fell back on the fact that, wow, they love each other so everything is forgiven. Which, ok. in the Winchester world that's probably how it is.

But it feels sort of like the show went around thinking it might try some new and different flavors for sustenance and then decided fuck it and just ordered a pizza. A pizza that was cold and congealing by the time it arrived.

THAT THAT THAT! (damn I wish I had your ability with words!) If FELT like they were doing something amazing. Something different, something that got to the route of their relationship and then...nope. We'll just let Sam say it was "a lie" and Dean say "he's proud" and all will be forgiven. And yes, maybe ALL those other things have deeper meanings but man, I'm getting tired of trying to join those dots. And tired of saying - maybe the next episode they'll go there.

Jared's messy crying still does things to me, no matter how exasperated I am with the context.

Me too. I had a lump in my throat. I was on the VERGE of tears and then they cut away and I remembered there was a boring angel storyline. Felt short changed on the death.

I also think demon!Dean has potential but I'm not even going to HOPE for anything next season. Nothing. At. All. And then I might actually let it wash over me and find a way of enjoying it on a purely surface level.

Zebra and I said exactly the same thing about Gadreel and Metatron. Why leave us with the super boring and ugly angel and not Gadreel - who was beginning to be interesting? Seriously hope we don't have to put up with much more of Gadreel next season. And pls don't let Cas be healing Dean - may well be the last and final final straw.

I think Crowley and Dean could be an interesting combo. I wonder how long they'll keep Dean as a demon? (ack! See! I'm already thinking about S10.../o\)

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

Maybe they just couldn't get Tahmoh for another season. But quite apart from coming to find Gadreel's arc effective and interesting, I did enjoy having Tahmoh around being easy on the eyes. And I was just feeling a glimmer of Cas/Gadreel shippiness (and I so much prefer the tendency to hang angel storylines around Cas when it deals with his relationships with individual angels -- Uriel, Anna, Balthazar, the beginnings of something with Gadreel -- than when it's all about leadership arcs and heaven en masse), and then boom.

ETA: though I will say, as someone who usually despises redemptive deaths and had no use for, say, Gabriel's (maybe) exit, Gadreel's ending did work for me, it was genuinely moving. So I'm annoyed that they did it, but it's one thing for which I'm not annoyed with how they did it.

EyetagainTA: I think maybe it worked for me because so much of Gadreel's concern was quite openly reputational, about how he'd be remembered, and a redemptive death is, in a non-pejorative sense, really great for propaganda. So it would have been nice to see a longterm change arc in him, but the shortcut was actually a journey to its own perfectly sense-making end, not a detour from a different kind of arc.

I will stop editing now.

[ash48.livejournal.com]

I also liked Gadreel's ending. It was a much better way from going out than could have been. Also, Gadreel had one of the strongest story arcs of the season. It actually made a lot of sense to me.

And I keep wondering if Sam and Deans' arcs are feeling unsatisfying because they aren't finished yet? Maybe Carver really is in the middle of his 3 year story line and he's still working through their overall issues. I'm not sure if I want to hope that hard.

Cas had a more satisfying storyline also. I wasn't particularly invested in it, but from beginning to end it had a nice curve.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Fucking YES to this -" I had a lump in my throat. I was on the VERGE of tears and then they cut away and I remembered there was a boring angel storyline. Felt short changed on the death."

I was for once live streaming and those parts felt like the slap in the face that the advert breaks brought to the narrative too. I mean, Dean was fecking DYING and they cut to some angel faff.